J.D. Roth, who voiced Johnny Quest, was almost Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
It’s not surprising to hear about how other actors nearly got roles on Star Trek. It happens a lot. It’s always interesting to hear who else was up for the role. By now most of you know who Welsely Crusher is, and that he was played by Wil Wheaton. The character is one of the more divisive ones in the history of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but a different actor wouldn’t have helped. Not even if it was J.D. Roth of Johnny Quest fame.
An old cast list was found on Letters of Note, which featured Roth’s name as the only consideration for Wesley.
Now, some of you might think that we’re talking about the 1960’s Johnny Quest cartoon and that there was no way a 40-50-year-old could pull off Wesley Crusher on The Next Generation. We’re not, in the early-to-mid 90s, there was a Johnny Quest revival called The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest that introduced Race Bannon’s daughter to the cast and focused on a new virtual reality system called Quest World.
It was awesome and may have earned its own write-up one of these days.
Before Roth was hanging with Haji and Bandit, however, he was winning kids over on Saturday mornings as the host of GamePro TV. Before there was YouTube, Twitch and an infinite number of websites, if you were a gamer at the turn of the decade you only had two sources to turn to; magazines or syndicated television.
Enter Roth’s turn as the host of GamePro TV, a televised version of the magazine of the same name, where every week Roth would take fans’ questions and try to give tips and tricks to beat the hardest levels in the hardest games.
Roth would’ve made a fine Wesley if he had been given the chance, but it’s not like Roth didn’t go on to have a successful career in his own right. He’s gone on to be one of the better producers today and is currently one of the minds behind Bar Rescue, part of the ViacomCBS family, which also owns Star Trek.
It all comes back around, apparently.